


wtf are u doing

by gowoakechi



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, The Kissing Bridge (IT)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23236813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gowoakechi/pseuds/gowoakechi
Summary: R + E had just been carved into the wood of the kissing bridge and Richie Tozier was about to go on his way home until someone had called out to him."Richie?" said a familiar high pitched voice.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Kudos: 15





	wtf are u doing

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this back in november and i haven't touched it for months but thanks 4 bein here!

Richie's fingers had started to hurt from the amount of force he was putting onto them, carving the lines out onto the old, musty wood of the kissing bridge. What had been formed as of now was "R + I", only three lines left to carve, if Richie hadn't started hesitating right after he had finished his own initial. A sigh escaped him, his gaze had met the ground below him and the top of his head rested on the other hand which gripped the wood hard, eyebrows furrowed and chest tightened. Regret was already starting to fill his heart and mind, even though he knew well that after he had started to carve out his and Eddie's initials, he couldn't go back anymore. It was as if he felt how he did when he first realized he was in love with his own best friend—panic.

It was a lonely day in the arcade, during the months in which Sonia Kaspbrak had made a nonexistent vow to keep her son away from the rest of the losers, which was sad in more ways than one. Richie had missed his friends a lot, and whenever he did, one way or another, his thoughts would come circling back to the topic that was Eddie and how he missed his presence as a whole. It was then that he realized the weight of his feelings for him was heavier than anyone else's, not even the girls back in kindergarten whom he thought he was "in love" with. He stayed staring at the animation of the bomb timer in front of him. He had been playing street fighter—as he always did—but had ended up distracted the whole game, and now its countdown to one was merely white noise now. the trance he was in had come to a sudden stop right after the timer hit zero and he got a game over, but he was mainly concerned about the realization that he was in love with the wheezy boy (and maybe also the dude playing the game beside him who was already giving him weird looks, as he looked like an idiot just staring at the screen, frozen).

Asif his body moved on its own, he continued to carve out the remaining lines, with force and haste, wanting to get it over with already. His hands moved quickly, and by then, the remaining three lines of an E had already been permanently carved onto the kissing bridge. It was light—the markings—but it was there, and eventually Richie was gonna come back and carve it deep enough for it to be as clear enough as the R, as he originally planned it to be. He stood up and dusted the dirt off his knees, keeping the knife in his front pocket and was about to start riding his bike back home, where he planned to cry for hours and then take a nap afterwards, until a voice called out to him from behind. A squeaky, high-pitched voice coming from a boy he knows.

"Richie?"

It was Eddie—Eddie with his cute polo shirt wearing his cute fanny pack and his cute face. He was walking his bike through the bridge, his cast as clean as it was when it was first put on his poor, broken arm—and no, he did not allow Richie to draw a bunch of dicks on it during the first and only time Eddie had snuck out to the quarry just to meet up with him. It was during the one afternoon where Sonia Kaspbrak was fast asleep on the leather couch in front of the TV—which had been showing an odd kid's reality show, and Richie had phoned him first using one of his accents, just in case she was going to be the one to pick up. It was dumb—picking up the phone and the first thing you hear being "Tip top of the morning to ya!" being recited nasally by a dumbass who was actually decent at it. They had both wanted to talk—to know if they were both feeling okay after the fight, and if they didn't, it was still clear that they both somehow felt better after seeing each other and bickering to the ends of the earth as they always did.

Richie stared, dumbfounded by his presence and the inevitability of Eddie seeing what he had just done and wondering about it, maybe even asking about it if he noticed anything about how weird Richie would be acting in the next few seconds. The knife was tucked not-so-safely into Richie's pocket, and although the shape of the handle stuck out like a sore thumb, it wasn't very clear that it was a knife—could pass as a cig or two from afar—and Richie was thankful for that. The only question was: what was he doing crouching and sitting so close to the bridge like that? Eddie had seen that much from afar, and he already had a guess as to what Richie was doing, but brushed it off and instead decided to save that question for later.

Eddie was slowly approaching Richie as he stayed still, not moving from his last position—which was both hands on his bike handles and his head turned behind him to face Eddie. as Richie realized they would probably have their conversation right there and now (which wasn't all that true because Eddie wouldn't have cared less about where they were going to talk, because in the first place he wouldn't ask about anything) he turned his body around to Eddie's direction and shoved his hands into his pockets, fidgeting with the knife as his pace quickened the nearer Eddie got to him. It was quiet—Richie hadn't said anything in response to Eddie and instead shut up—which was strange, especially for the trashmouth.

"What are you doing?" Eddie broke the silence, his tone sounding like the normal way of how he had always addressed Richie.

"No, what are you doing? Pretty sure this isn't the way to your house, Eds."

Eddie scoffed at that last part, "Don't call me Eds, and I'm only going through here because I want to, dipshit."

"Whatever you say, Eddie-spaghetti!" he used his free hand (which wasn't currently preoccupied with anxiously playing with a switchknife) to reach into Eddie's hair and ruffle it as much as he could. Eddie pulled his head back in disgust and his arms flailed to fight back Richie's lanky arm, earning a giggle from Richie as he refused to stop playing with the other boy's hair. "Stop it!" Eddie repeatedly huffed, until they were both turned into blushy laughing messes, of course on the infamous kissing bridge. They shared a glance—a quick second of both their eyes meeting each other's—and they both felt something odd in that moment.

They looked away, and Eddie's eyes landed on—not the R + E—but the carving right below it—the initial R with a boxy heart drawing around it. Richie had seen it before too, but only thinking about how hard it probably was to draw a heart on wood, all with straight lines. Of course he was oblivious to the possibility that the R was meant for him and that whoever drew it was someone he knew—someone who was literally standing right in front of him right at this very moment. It wasn't that long ago when Eddie did it, only a few days after his and Richie's feud at the hammock, and it was then he figured out his troublesome feelings for Richie (that he was in love with him, of course). It was a blur, Eddie would have described it as if he was drunk on the day he went to the bridge and then blacked out immediately right after he kept the big, rusty nail he had found on the side of the street—which was the last thing that pushed him to go to the bridge, because before that, he had been desperately trying to find a reason not to push through with it. What he did know was that he perfectly knew what he was doing, and didn't understand why he couldn't find any genuine hint of regret in him.

Richie's heart stopped once he had noticed Eddie's eyes looking towards the direction of where he had written their initials. He was fucked, he thought. At this point, there was no way out of this situation, and while he knew Eddie would probably try to ignore it out of awkwardness, it didn't change the fact that the possibility of the R + E being two completely different people had already been crossed out due to the fact that Richie was literally right there at the crime scene, and if Eddie had been walking closer at the right time, he could have seen the knife cutting into the wood as Richie finished off the E. He could live with Eddie knowing that it was there, but he couldn't live with knowing that there was almost a 0% possibility of him being able to deny that it was him who made the carving—at least denying it believably without cracking.

"What are YOU doing here, then?" Eddie asked, half-jokingly and half-seriously, slightly hoping he would find out the real answer, although he'd asked with genuine curiosity. Richie looked away as if he was trying to stall for more time in making an excuse as to why he was suspiciously hanging out by the kissing bridge—alone. his eyes darted around the area, looking to the trees, to the stream below, to the bridge railing, and whatever had been written there. Richie had a specific reason, Eddie knew, and he knew that Richie wouldn't be acting this on-edge if whatever he was doing was just absolutely nothing.

"Uh, your mom."

Obviously.

Eddie's shoulders had immediately slumped lower than it was before, and he gave Richie a death glare right after the word “your” came out of his mouth, because what else would he say afterwards other than "mom"? Richie giggled and tried to reach out to his bike behind him, attempting to grab one of the handles to slightly lean on—missing, and his hands instead smacked the rubber of the bike handles and causing it to almost tip over. Eddie had just watched as Richie fixed the position of his bike, muttering a small "shit," under his cigarette-smelling breath. At this point, Eddie was already worried—worried at how the infamous trashmouth had for some reason shut up. Of course Richie was capable of holding his tongue for at least a while, but the unusual part was that he had never seen him act this way (and later we would find out that this is how richie acts around the boys he thinks are cute—the boy he thinks is cute).

There had been a one month gap in between their short rendezvous at the quarry and their sudden encounter today, which would have given the two plenty to discuss if it weren't for the odd circumstances that had brought upon the chance meeting in the first place. Eddie was suspicious enough as it is, and Richie's head was too full to actually start a proper conversation that would have normally lead to another session of back-and-forth arguing (in their own Richie & Eddie way). Somehow, Richie's head was empty and full at the same time, and at this point he had began considering growing a pair and telling eddie himself that he liked him and had just written their two initials on the bridge, and it was as easy as it sounded, if only he was sure of what Eddie's reaction would be to those two slightly overwhelming details—and maybe he wanted to do exactly that.


End file.
